To Dream Together
by KatLeePT
Summary: Sarah doesn't want to say the words. Male/female romance. AU.


"Wait. Stop. Please. I don't want to say those words."

He stops and simply gazes at her, his beautiful head cocked slightly to one side.

"I don't want to say them, but I will if I must. Can't you just release Toby? Can't you let him go back to our world if . . . especially if I stay with you?"

"You would do that for your brother?"

"For Toby. For us." She steps closer to him; her eyes lock with his. "Don't you want a chance, Jareth, to find out if I can love you? I think I may already, but I can't let myself as long as you have my brother. He's just a baby! I can't let him be condemned to this world for the rest of his life, not when he can't even make a choice!"

"Is that it?" Jareth ponders aloud, his gloved fingers touching his regal chin in perplexed thought. "Is that truly the case, Sarah? You would love me if your brother is free?"

There's something more than just mere defiance in her eyes as she answers him, "I'll never know for sure, will I, if you don't release him? You'll never know." She steps closer to him again until there's only a breath of space between their bodies. "Jareth, he's my brother. I have to protect him. I will say the words if I must, but there'll be a lie. We both know it. Please don't make me say them," she pleas. "Just release him."

He extends a hand to her, fingers and palm pointed upward. "If I release him, return him to your world, will you stay with me?"

"Yes!" she almost cries the words. "Yes, I'll stay! Of my own free will, if you release my brother, I will stay with you." Her lips begin to inch upward into a smile. "I do kind of like it down here."

"But what about me, Sarah? What would you have me do other than release your brother? I only took him, you know, because you asked me to."

She is smiling now. "I didn't know what I was asking when I spoke the first words. How could I? How could a simple, upper world girl think that the King of Goblins would really have fallen in love with her? The book was written long before I was even old enough to read it."

"It's actually older that," he says a bit wistfully, "but I loved none of the others."

"So there were others before me?"

"Yes." She wonders how many but doesn't dare voice the question. Somehow, she knows that the thought of him ever trying to love another girl would hurt her. "Many," he answers her unspoken question without hesitation.

"What is this, Jareth?" she puzzles aloud. "You're a King. You're powerful." He smiles so slyly that she finds herself rolling her eyes. "You know you are. But you're stuck doing this stuff that you don't even want to do."

His answering sigh is a deep one of pondering thought. She knows he's weighing rather or not he should tell her the truth. "Please," she speaks honestly and from her heart. She starts to reach out to him, but when his bicolored eyes move to her hand, she stills herself. "Please," she repeats instead, "tell me. You're a King. Why do you play by others' rules?"

"Because I must, if I am ever to escape this world." He turns from her, a flounce in his steps. "There. Are you happy?" he demands. "I am not as powerful as I seem."

She is smiling truthfully now as she approaches him again. She tries to steal a look over his leather-clad shoulder at his handsome face, knowing that his true emotions can now be read therein. "You turned my world upside down."

He looks coyly up at her, a smile beginning to lift his countenance again. "I did," he admits with no hesitation, "but turning a girl's world upside down is far easier than escaping this land."

"So what is it you have to do?" she asks. "Steal a baby to take your place?"

"Yes, but the child must have a champion who is given the opportunity to free him."

"So you've brought many baby boys down here, and many of their sisters."

"Yes."

"And you yourself. You weren't born here, were you? You were born up there!" Sarah points up. She's getting excited now as she begins to deduce the entirety of the situation in which she has landed. "Your sister failed you."

"No. From all accounts, it was my mother," he speaks softly, sadly. He smirks. Cold irony laces his voice as he adds, "Now she cleans my boots."

"So you were raised by the Goblins."

"Yes."

"And never really got to know your mother or father or sister."

"I do not even know if I had a sister." His head, along with his voice, raises. "But this is not supposed to be my life story, Sarah." She hears a rumbling in the distance and fears, for a moment, that he may be summoning the Cleaners again. "It is supposed to be yours. Every child who enters this labyrinth comes accompanied by a girl who learns innumerable life lessons along her journey."

"I have learned a lot," she acknowledges. "About myself and about this world." Her eyes meet his again. "About you." She smiles tenderly at him. "I wasn't lying before you, you know. I think I could learn to love you very easily if Toby wasn't involved. Free him, Jareth, and I will stay with you, of my own free will, forever."

"Forever is a very long time, Sarah."

"Longer than a human life, I know, but while I live, I will stay with you." She reaches out to take the hand he offered her earlier. "I want to stay with you, Jareth, but not if it means condemning my brother to a life he can't choose for himself. You wouldn't have chosen it. Would you really force it upon another unknowing child?"

He hesitates. "No. No, not if I have eternity to spend with you."

She smiles and lets his very presence pull her closer to him. She loves the feel of his body against hers, and now she can admit, if only to herself, that these feelings between them, the way he makes her feel, is what the best of dreams are made of. "Then release him, Jareth. Release him, and I will stay. That is my proposal to you."

He brushes her long, dark hair from her face. She tingles starting at where his fingertips brush her flesh and hair and going all the way throughout her body. Now, at last, she understands what makes a woman's toes curl. "I have one for you, Sarah, the same one I have been offering to you since the beginning. Love me, let me love you, do as I say, and I will be your slave."

She wants to kiss him. She's never wanted anything so badly in all her life than to just melt into his arms and let the emotion roaring in her heart to be named and released take over. But, still, she thinks of Toby. "Show me my brother," she manages to command him. "Show me he's happy and where he belongs first." God, she wonders, has any man's mouth ever looked so beautiful as his when he smiles?

The hand that swept her hair from her face now circles her waist, pulling her close to his side where they both feel like she belongs. The other hand, with a single flick of his wrist, conjures a crystal ball. They peer together into it and see her brother laughing and smiling, clapping his hands and gurgling as babies do. In the background of the scene, Sarah can hear her father's voice calling her name.

Jareth watches her as she listens to him. She thinks of her father for a moment, a long moment. He has tried hard, but not hard enough. He's never truly loved her, and neither did her mother. She would not have left her for all the wilds and lights of Hollywood had she ever loved her. She would not have left them if she had loved them, but then, too, her father would not replace her stepmother above her if he truly loved her. He would have listened to her, not his wife, when she'd told him of some of the things her stepmother had done to both herself and Merlin.

No sooner has she thought of her dog than she hears his bark in the distance. She looks up as the crystal ball vanishes. He's rushing toward her, barking happily. She beams as she looks back up at Jareth. "I didn't ask you."

He smiles so fondly down back at her and again strokes her hair. "You didn't have to. It pleases me to make you happy. All I need to know is what you want, and I will be glad to do it. I am your slave, Sarah."

"No." She shakes her head as she turns in his arm and slides her own hands up his chest. God, he feels as magnificent as he has looked since she first laid eyes upon him! "I don't want you to be my slave, Jareth. You're so much more than that, more than a King."

"What am I, Sarah?" he puzzles aloud, and she knows that the question is one he's wondered before. Then he twists his own words. "What I am to you?"

"I think . . . " She pauses. That wasn't right. It wasn't true. "I believe . . . " She shakes her head; his fingers catch at her tumbling locks. "I _know_ you are my soul mate, Jareth." Her eyes, her body, her whole being sparkles with the truth as she beams lovingly up at him. Nobody has ever truly loved her before. Nobody has turned their world upside down for her before. Nobody has ever loved her like he does.

"Sarah," he breathes her name, but she understands at last what has been roaring for so long in her heart now.

"Sh," she commands, and he hushes as her lips near his. Leaning up, leaning against and into him, she touches her lips to his, and with that single kiss, makes all their dreams come true.

The End


End file.
